extrasensory perception; 67 percent had experienced déjà vu; 31 percent had experienced clairvoyance.
These figures have been echoed in national surveys by the Gallup Organization.2 From 1980 to 1985 their surveys indicated that 15 percent of Americans have had a near-death experience; 43 percent have had an unusual spiritual experience; 71 percent believe in life after death; 95 percent believe in a universal spirit or God. In 1986, 67 percent of teenagers reported that they believed in angels. Studies in the 1970s by Greeley and his associates showed 15 percent to 30 percent less activity in terms of spiritual experiences—with only 27 percent of adults reporting contact with the dead; 59 percent reporting déjà vu; 58 percent reporting ESP; and 24 percent reporting clairvoyance.
Either the numbers of people having spiritual experiences are increasing, or people are more courageous about admitting that they are having these kinds of experiences. Is this an indication that more of us are crazy? Are we a nation of psychotics? Or are we a nation of people now opening to share with each other a level of spiritual life we have not yet spoken about?
The Positive Results of Spiritual Experience
I believe the numbers indicate that it is natural to have spiritual experiences as part of human development. Clearly, a byproduct of these experiences is that they enhance creativity and compassion, the ability to relax and be at peace with oneself, and the desire to be of service to others. These qualities are all useful in maintaining and improving the quality of individual and collective life on this planet. Thus, the development of these qualities may be indicative of our evolutionary pattern.
Evidence of these positive results is described in research on people who have for a time been clinically dead and then come back to life—a near-death experience, people who have awakened spiritual energetic forces, kundalini, in their own body, cross-cultural studies of shamans, and highly creative individuals.3 Dr. Kenneth Ring recognized a pattern of change in behavior in the majority of people who had had near-death experiences. These resembled the results people also achieved from intense kundalini awakenings brought on spontaneously or by spiritual practices like meditation. He found that people usually have no increased fear of death, believe in the existence of higher force(s) that are unconditionally loving and compassionate, perceive the universality of all religions, become more spiritual and less identified with any specific religion, often acquire the ability to heal and other psychic abilities, and out of increased compassion seek to improve the quality of life of other people.
The creativity born of spiritual experiences is documented in the biographies of our inventors, musicians, writers, and artists. Puccini described the inspiration for his Madama Butterfly in the following way:
The music of this opera was dictated to me by God; I was merely instrumental in putting it on paper and communicating it to the public.4
Brahms described it this way:
When I feel the urge I begin by appealing directly to my Maker. . . . I immediately feel vibrations which thrill my whole being. . . . In this exalted state I see clearly what is obscure in my ordinary moods; then I feel capable of drawing inspiration from above as Beethoven did. . . . Those vibrations assume the form of distinct mental images.5
George Sand speaks of her writing thus:
The Wind plays my old harp as it lists. . . . It is the other who sings as he likes, well or ill, and when I try to think about it, I am afraid and tell myself that I am nothing, nothing at all.6
Inventors often speak of getting their inspiration from dreams or the hypnagogic state, a state of consciousness between dreaming and waking. Thus, the source of their inspiration comes from the resources of the higher unconscious. Albert Einstein received valuable information through a waking vision. When he was resting on top of a hill one day he imagined himself traveling to the sun and returning. The experience "felt" to him as if he had traveled in a curved line. This insight led to his developing his famous equation, "Energy is equal to mass times the speed of light squared." Sir Frederick Grant Banting found his laboratory procedure for the mass production of insulin in a dream state.
How is it, then, that we have for such a long time thought spiritual experiences to be indicators of madness, and messages from the unconscious to be primarily workings of repressed emotion? How could our psychologists and doctors have been so misinformed? The issue is not misinformation, but rather, whether individuals have the capacity to integrate the experiences into their daily lives. If an individual does not have the wherewithal within himself or the guidance he needs to accommodate intense spiritual experiences, such an experience may accelerate a disintegration of his mental health, just as any intense physical or emotional experience might likewise overwhelm him. This is the madness society fears. But if an individual has the capacity to integrate the spiritual experience into her ordinary day-to-day life, it enhances her life, giving her access to higher levels of human development beyond ego. This is called spiritual emergence.
Spiritual Emergency Versus Psychosis
Spiritual emergency is a term that describes critical points in the process of spiritual emergence. Spiritual emergency marks a period of spiritual experiences that is overwhelming, when a person is struggling to integrate the feelings, thoughts, perceptions, and energy associated with the episode. It can happen that the crisis may be incapacitating for a time, making it impossible to carry on normal activities of work or childrearing. In this case, the person needs the care of someone who perceives his inner experiences as meaningful. This helper would be a support person who follows him through the full cycle of his crisis and helps him find a conceptual framework to make sense of the experience.
Intense spiritual experiences and inspired states of mind may often look similar to psychosis. In a purely spiritual experience persons may be preoccupied with an inner experience to the extent that they may not care to communicate with others. Instead, their communication is taking place with inner guides or higher forces. If given the proper context and guidance, persons undergoing these experiences can reach higher levels of functioning and bring spiritual gifts to their human community. On the other hand, visual and auditory hallucinations, delusions, and inability to communicate are symptoms of psychotic behavior that may indicate a person is falling from a normal level of functioning into a diseased state. Psychotic states that are pathological, rather than gateways to higher functioning, are very real, and need to be treated by health professionals.
Spiritual Emergence: My Story
I never confused my own spiritual awakening with mental disease, because of the excellent guidance I received. My process of integrating my spiritual experiences illustrates many types of transpersonal experiences. It depicts a spiritual emergence process that has not included a severely debilitating spiritual emergency. I never had a crisis that incapacitated me for a period of more than a few moments. Still, after each of my intense awakenings I felt disoriented, alone, and often fearful as I tried to integrate the experiences.
When I was still very young, at eighteen, I met Graf Karlfried von Durkheim, who modeled for me how to hold ordinary reality simultaneously with the extraordinary spiritual dimension, and thus to integrate the two. He was a psychoanalyst, an intuitive, a meditator, a man of God, and an author (Hara: The Vital Center in Man). People who were lost or wanted assistance in their personal development came to him. He had them meditate, and he gave them therapy. He helped them integrate their spiritual experiences into their lives.
Within two years, I met several other teachers of this type. In fact, at twenty, I transformed my life: I went from being an art student to being a Zen Buddhist nun, just so I would have more access to teachers who would help me learn how to dovetail my ordinary consciousness
